Original subtitles

Bettany: The ancient egyptians.

They built great pyramids, temples and tombs in life.

In a bid to become immortal after death.

I am professor bettany hughes.

I'm a historian and I spend my life traveling the world to

Investigate the stories of the cultures and civilizations of the past

And I love having the chance to share what I found with you.

(theme music plays).

The valley of the kings.

Since tombs were discovered centuries ago,

Mummies have gripped our imagination.

Why do we find them so fascinating?

These incredible mummified remains tell us so much,

Not just about death, but about life.

If you want to understand the ancient world,

Who better to ask than an ancient egyptian?

To begin my countdown, at number 10,

Someone who died over 3,200 years ago and who lived as the

Most powerful man on earth.

The ancient egyptians mummified their dead to give

Them eternal life, so they'd be remembered for all time.

Certainly the case with one almighty pharaoh.

This man, ramesses ii, or ramesses the great,

Still holds court in cairo.

Egyptologist salima ikram is helping me explore why he

Deserves to be called the great.

So here he is, one of the most powerful men that ever lived, arguably.

Salima: Oh absolutely, he's magnificent.

And he's really, he was an imposing creature in life,

Because he's almost six foot tall which was magnificently

Tall for an ancient egyptian and what's really cool about

His, if you look at his nose, it's been stuffed,

That's why it stands proud, so there's a little bone in it

And lots of little seeds because everyone else's

Nose has sort of collapsed inward,

But it was a prominent feature of ramesses the second's

Physiognomy and he was really proud of his honker.

Bettany: And tell me what else,

Because we know so much about him from historical records,

From inscriptions, what does this mummy tell you about the man?

Salima: Well, poor thing, I mean he lived until he was almost 90.

He had horrible teeth, he must have been suffering from

Abscesses and various other things.

He had some arthritis; he had a bit of stooping going on.

So he was not in very tip-top physical condition,

But he did live longer than almost any other ancient

Egyptian because most people were dead by the time they were 40.

Bettany: Across egypt you'll find temples,

Monuments and statues bearing the name,

And face, of ramesses the great.

He almost certainly built more than any other pharaoh.

This is the ramesseum, and what this is actually a mortuary temple,

So it's where ramesses the great's body was mummified

Before it was taken to his tomb in the valley of the kings.

In this valley of death, ramesses ensured his

Achievements in life were celebrated.

Ramesses the second came from a great soldiering family and

He commemorated his campaigns on these walls.

Here he is victorious, on his chariot.

Mummies were one way of securing immortality,

Majestic monuments another, and just across the nile,

I want to show you one of ramesses' most fabulous projects.

This is the great temple at karnak.

And you'd have made your way in through these massive

Pylons, which are kind of monumental gateways,

And actually give us our word pylon today.

They're a fittingly grandiose front door for what's

The largest ancient religious site in the world,

Where the most impressive architecture was commissioned

By ramesses the great...

And to really appreciate this,

I'm heading up for the best view.

Where I've got special access inside the monument.

Whenever I come to an archaeological dig in egypt,

Then nearly always the men who are there doing the skilled

And specialist work are from just one village called qift,

Which is very close to here.

So qiftis have becomes the kind of unofficial guardians

Of all egyptian heritage, and there's one here in the temple.

He's here, I've not met him before.

Hello! Are you mr farooq?

Mahmoud: Hi, good to see you.

Bettany: Oh, hello! Lovely to meet you.

I'm great. I'm great thank you.

This is mr farouk who's, I think you're going to let me up.

Mahmoud: I let you go up. I help you go up to the high.

Let's go now.

Bettany: Amazing. So, no one's normally allowed up here.

But mr farouk has the key.

Mahmoud: I have the key, of course.

Bettany: Just like his father, and grandfather before him,

Mahmoud farouk is one of the qufti guardians who look after karnak's temples.

Wow!

This is, so this is the original passage up through there.

Mahmoud: That's part of the wall cavern.

Bettany: Through the wall.

Yeah, it's a little bit slippery.

Oh great, is that daylight there?

These are the original steps, it's fantastic!

It's a huge honor for me to be allowed access to this

Incredible passageway, gouged out over 2,500 years ago.

Mahmoud: Now we go to the way to the top.

Bettany: Oh my gosh!

Mahmoud: You need a hand?

Bettany: No, well I've just spotted the,

Oh my god, that's making me feel weird.

Mahmoud: Please come behind me.

Bettany: That's a sheer drop down there.

Only about 60 meters or so.

This is amazing.

Mahmoud: You know you are the first person from different

Than an egyptian to come here for long time?

Bettany: I'm genuinely honored.

This is incredible.

Mahmoud aims to come here every day,

Lovingly restoring and caring for this ancient temple,

With some of the same techniques used by

Ramesses the great's workmen!

Mahmoud: I be honest with you, I like here more than my house.

Because I come here every day.

Bettany: Thank you, shukraan.

Mahmoud: I'm so happy you are happy.

Good for me.

Bettany: Yeah, I'm very, very happy indeed.

It's beautiful. Truly beautiful.

Standing up here you really get a sense of the scale of

Ramesses' achievements, and why he was revered as

An all-powerful leader.

And down there, I want to show you one of the reasons he's

Remembered as ramesses the great today.

You know I was talking about how ramesses was very involved

In international campaigns and warfare,

There's a fantastic bit of evidence for that here.

The writing on this wall doesn't just record history,

It makes it.

Ramesses' archenemies were the hittites and the two powers

Had huge battles that had gone on and on for years and

Eventually they decided to call it quits and there is

Evidence of that here on this wall,

Which is arguably the world's first ever peace treaty.

Creating this, ramesses the great secured his place in the history books.

A copy of this peace treaty still hangs in the

United nations building in new york today.

And even ramesses' mummy itself has made history.

So this is an incredible thing.

Ramesses ii has a passport and travelled to France

In the 70's, wasn't it?

Salima: Yes, in about '77 he went off because he had grown

Some kind of mould, which couldn't be treated here.

And so he was issued with a passport,

'occupation: King, comma, deceased'

Bettany: Amazing. Yeah, isn't that great.

Sorry, but that is the best occupation on a passport,

'king, deceased'.

And that must make him the oldest human in the world to

Have been issued with a passport.

Salima: Oh absolutely, he is the best travelled pharaoh and

Perhaps, apart from tutankhamun,

One of the most famous.

Bettany: Ramesses the great in the ancient world and pretty

Great in the modern world too...

Salima: Oh absolutely.

Bettany: This is one of our treasures

Because this pharaoh and his passport reminds us,

And it's really, really critical to remember this,

These are real people with real lives.

And in the case of ramesses the second,

With remarkable lifetimes.

He was a celebrity in his own day,

He's become a celebrity now, and his life changed history itself.

Next, I explore the most extravagant funeral home in

History, fit for the most beautiful mummy in the world.

In cairo there's an extraordinary character who

Helps us understand tons about how the ancient egyptians

Mummified their dead, and why they went to all that trouble!

Beautiful ancient egyptians in existence,

Seti the first.

He's number 9 in our countdown of egyptian mummies.

Seti the first was the father of our friend ramesses the great.

Just like his son, he was a hugely successful pharaoh.

But in father-son rivalry there's one category where he

Wins hands down...

His mummy.

Because seti the first boasts some of the finest

Mummification work in all of ancient egyptian history.

Mummification is an incredible process of drying out and

Embalming the body to preserve it,

Ready for its journey to immortality in the afterlife.

Key to it all was the preparation of the body.

Typically your brain is pulled out through your nostrils with

An iron hook.

Next, all of your major organs are removed,

Apart from the heart, ancient egyptians believed this was

The centre of your being.

These organs are then preserved in special jars so

They can be reunited with their owner in the afterlife.

Your body is then covered in a salt called natron and left to

Dry for up to 40 days.

Finally the now mummified body is wrapped head to foot in

Hundreds of meters of linen bandages,

Attached with a glue, and magical spells are cast to

Protect the mummy and prepare it for safe arrival in the afterlife.

But seti's mummy is unusual.

His face is incredibly well preserved;

He looks almost perfect, not what you might expect from a

Body over 3,000 years old!

But frankly, seti's had quite a lot of work done.

Unlocking the secrets behind seti's youthful good looks is

Professor of radiology sahar saleem.

Sahar: I always looked at his mummy and I said,

'this is no mummy. This is a sleeping beauty.'

I've always wondered what was his secret.

The secrets revealed to me that the ancient egyptians

Were very efficient as plastic surgeons.

Bettany: So, was it really plastic surgery?

Sahar: Yeah, and they actually placed fillers around the nose

And the mouth, in this region, in the cheeks,

And even in the temporal.

Bettany: What does this tell you about their ideas of

Ancient beauty?

For men as well as for women.

Sahar: The ancient egyptian would like to look like his gods.

Bettany: There is something very,

Very charismatic about him.

Sahar: He was the most well-mummified person from

Ancient egypt that I've ever looked at.

Bettany: I love the way you talk about him.

I bet you wish you'd met him.

Sahar: Definitely. We will meet one day.

Bettany: In the afterlife! Brilliant, brilliant.

Well good luck.

Egyptians beautified seti's mummy to make sure it was

In the best possible shape to travel to the afterlife.

Once there, seti would need a stunning home for all eternity.

So I've come to the valley of the kings near luxor.

Hidden within this rocky landscape are the tombs of the

Most famous pharaohs in egyptian history.

Now I want to show you seti's, because quite frankly,

It is pretty mind blowing.

And it also holds clues to the story of his mummy,

Which was nearly lost forever.

For over 1,000 years, ancient egyptian pharaohs had built

Massive tombs to house their mummified remains,

In preparation for their journey to the afterlife.

Now, they didn't just believe that they were living on as

Humans, but as almighty gods, so rival pharaohs would build

Evermore-magnificent tombs to try to outdo their predecessors.

Morning, morning, morning,

Ah shukraan, is it ok to come in here?

Thank you, shukraan.

With over 170 meters of corridors and chambers,

Seti's mummy's tomb is one of the longest,

And to be honest the most splendid,

In the whole valley...

Oh my goodness, I just love this place because it goes on

And on and on and every single surface is decorated,

And each one of these pictures tell us what seti the first,

And actually all of our mummies,

Believed happened to them in their journey to the afterlife.

The egyptians believed that the afterlife was a real,

Physical place, and that the dead pharaoh would live near

These tombs as if they were royal palaces.

Built to ensure a peaceful journey for the mummy to the afterlife,

In fact this is a massive target for tomb-raiders.

Originally there was a beautiful sarcophagus here,

But the rest of this incredible chamber was empty,

Because all of its treasure and seti's mummy itself had been robbed.

For over 3,000 years, the whereabouts of seti's mummy

Remained a mystery.

And as time passed seti's beautiful mummy was slowly forgotten.

But then, in 1881, a discovery near the valley of the kings

Changed everything.

Looking for treasure, a local tomb raider stumbled across a

Deep pit on a remote cliff face.

What he found inside took his breath away,

A secret cache of over 40 mummies,

All carefully labelled.

This mystery store was the work of ancient egyptian high priests.

They noticed that robbers were raiding the tombs and that

They were taking not just treasures but actual bodies.

Now, this really, really troubled him,

Because for him this wasn't just robbing,

This was desecration.

The priests master-minded a high risk mission,

To rescue the mummies of great pharaohs.

So what you have here is a roll call of ancient egyptian power,

Ramesses the great, ramesses the third,

And the magnificent mummy of seti the first.

It's hard to get your head round the scale of this task.

So they were stealing into each tomb,

Rescuing the mummy, bringing them here in secret and then

Lowering them down into that shaft,

Where they stayed undisturbed for 3,000 years.

Without the ancient high priests' foresight,

And the efforts of one very fortunate tomb raider,

Seti's mummy could have vanished from history.

Seti the first deserves to be on our list of egypt's

Greatest mummies, partly because he is such a fine

Example of preservation, but also because he reminds us

Why mummification matters.

It helps us to understand what mattered to them

Philosophically, because for men like seti the first,

Death wasn't the end, but the beginning of a better,

Brighter, more beautiful life.

Coming up, egypt's best kept secret.

We discover a long-forgotten pharaoh hidden deep in the desert.

Bye. See you again, I hope.

A mummy with a truly remarkable story.

The hunt for this individual inspired a blockbuster

Hollywood film and his identity remained an unsolved

Mystery until 1939.

I've come to investigate.

And here he is, the man who held onto his secrets for

3,000 years, and who helped to inspire me to be a historian.

To unpack the tale of our mystery mummy number 8

I'm heading deep into the nile delta.

When I was a teenager I went to see the film raiders of the lost ark,

And it had a huge influence on me.

Basically, I wanted to be indiana jones,

Discovering lost tombs, and treasures,

And cities and bouncing through the desert on the

Back of a pickup truck.

What I didn't realize then is that the film was based on a

Real sequence of events that happened where I am heading

Now, indiana jones' lost city of tanis.

And just like in raiders of the lost ark,

Our tale unfolds as the world is torn apart by the second world war.

So the nazis had their part to play in keeping this mummy a secret!

The story starts in 1929, when archaeologist pierre montet,

Our hero, comes here and starts digging.

And he doesn't stop digging for 10 years.

The expedition was searching for the tombs and the lost

City of tanis, a kind of mystical place described in

The bible as zoan.

Around the 11th century bce, the pharaohs had built a new

Capital city and harbor in the north,

Which they called tanis.

But over time the course of the nile changed,

The river silted up, and the city of tanis,

Its tombs and mummies were abandoned to the sands.

Montet suspected that the ancient city was hidden

Somewhere in the area.

For 10 years, montet and his team dug through five meters

Of sand and dirt until they struck archaeological gold.

In early 1939, montet found an entrance to what he believed

To be the long-lost royal tombs of the tanis pharaohs,

A forgotten place where few people come these days.

Hey, morning, sallahe, sallahe.

Ezzaj: Welcome. Bettany: Thank you.

You've got the key, do you?

Ezzaj: Yes. Here.

Bettany: Great.

Tomb guardian ezzaj arief has agreed to open up.

Ezzaj: Ok.

Bettany: Shukraan, thank you.

Bye, see you again.

I hope.

I'm very glad I've got my boots on,

Because you have to be careful of snakes down here, apparently.

So, when they got down, this entrance was blocked

By a limestone wall, but they managed to make their way through.

This is absolutely petrifying.

But I think it's going to be worth it.

Montet and his team dug until finally they broke through

Into a royal chamber.

To their dismay they found it had been cleared out by robbers.

But instead of giving up, montet kept digging.

For three weeks, he cleared his way through walls and passageways,

Until eventually he discovered a hidden chamber.

You've got to think how exciting this would have been,

Because this was the first time that anybody had been

Down here for 3,000 years.

And what he came across stopped him in his tracks.

What they discovered here was the intact chamber of a pharaoh.

Now, this is really, really rare because usually the

Tombs had been robbed.

Not only that, but this room was packed with silver and

Gold, and with hieroglyphs and decorations on every wall.

Montet had struck archaeological gold.

It would prove to be as life-changing a haul as the

Famous discovery of tutankhamun in 1922.

Right in the centre of this room was a huge solid silver coffin.

Now silver was even more precious than gold in ancient egypt.

But who was the mysterious occupant who lay inside?

When he opened the coffin, he saw a gold mask and

Breath-taking jewelry, fit for a king.

It's little surprise that montet described this as,

'a day of marvels'.

But what he didn't realize was that he'd stumbled upon a

Forgotten pharaoh, sheshonq the second.

The inscriptions inside the coffin revealed that he had

Discovered a pharaoh that no one had ever heard of before.

This unknown pharaoh is our mummy number 8,

Erased from history for nearly 3,000 years.

But unlike the discovery of tutankhamun's tomb,

There was no international fanfare for the opening of shoshenq's.

At the very time montet was unearthing his extraordinary

Find, the nazis were invading czechoslovakia.

And six months later, in September 1939,

Britain declared war on germany.

Montet's discovery was totally overshadowed by the outbreak

Of the second world war.

Luckily, shoshenq and his tomb of treasures weren't raided by

Tomb robbers, or nazis.

So I can still stand face to face with them here,

At the egyptian museum in cairo.

So, because of the conditions in the nile delta,

Which are really humid, the mummy of shoshenq the second

Is in a very fragile state.

Basically, all that's left inside here is a skeleton,

But it's not a bad coffin, is it?

This is made of silver, and it's in the shape of horus,

That great hawk-headed god.

Our forgotten pharaoh was buried with these four mini

Silver coffins, containing his internal organs.

This meant that when shoshenq the second reached the next

World, he could be put back together by magic and enter

The afterlife complete.

There's only one parallel for these mini coffins: The four

Gold ones found with tutankhamun.

With a solid silver coffin and dazzling jewelry,

Some of which could rival that of tutankhamun,

Shoshenq the second was clearly a force to be reckoned with.

Shoshenq the second is a worthy candidate for our list,

Because his story has inspired countless

Adventurers and archaeologists.

And his discovery proves that history and archaeology never

Stand still, but there are always new finds to be had.

Bettany: The magnificent great pyramid of giza.

It's over 4,500 years old and was built as a giant tomb for a pharaoh.

But my next mummy, wait for it,

Actually pre-dates the great pyramid by 1,000 years!

At number 7 on our countdown, we have an amazing discovery

From southern egypt, with a few surprises in store.

But, you won't find this extraordinary mummy in egypt.

To track it down, I'm heading to the british museum in

London, home to one of the largest collections of ancient

Egyptian mummies in the world.

Let me introduce you to gebelein man.

He's named after the place he comes from in egypt,

Just south of luxor.

And he has the most remarkable life story.

Gebelein man takes us right back to the very start of

Egyptian mummification.

And not only that, a recent discovery puts him at the

Centre of a murder mystery,

A mystery that goes back to the stone age.

Curator daniel antoine has been unlocking his

Extraordinary story.

When people think of mummies, I think they often imagine

Them wrapped in bandages and lying straight out with their

Arms crossed over their chests.

And he's incredible, but he's very different to that.

Daniel: He's quite unique.

There are very few of these so-called natural mummies,

And the reason he's preserved is because he was buried in a

Shallow pit and the heat of the sun could get to his

Remains and he's preserved with his internal organs intact.

Bettany: The searingly hot conditions in the desert dried

Out and mummified gebelein man's body,

Making him a 'natural' mummy.

So, do we know how old he is?

Daniel: We actually did some radio carbon dating,

Using a tiny fragment of his hair,

That suggests that he's about 5,300 years old,

Making him one of the oldest mummies in the world.

Bettany: That's unbelievable.

But the state of preservation is incredible.

I mean, I can see his hair and a little bit of stubble on his chin.

Daniel: It just suggests that the heat of the desert must

Have been really intense, because there's no evidence as

Far as we can see of artificial mummification

Bettany: Archaeologists believe that gebelein man was

Mummified by accident, and when the ancient egyptians

Found natural mummies like his,

They were gradually inspired to experiment with

Mummification on purpose.

The process of deliberate mummification finally took off

Seven centuries after our gebelein man died.

I've got to ask you about his position.

Daniel: You're right, it's quite unusual.

But it's typical of that period.

Bettany: As the ancient egyptians experimented with

Their mummification techniques,

They realized that laying the body out straight and wrapping

It in linen bandages guaranteed an incredible

Level of preservation.

But gebelein man doesn't only take us back to the very start

Of egyptian mummification,

He also has a sinister story to tell.

When daniel examined gebelein man's mummy,

He spotted something unusual on his left shoulder blade.

So he decided to ct scan the body,

To find out more.

From these scans, daniel has managed to piece together

Shocking clues to gebelein man's traumatic final moments.

Daniel: You can see that cut goes into the muscle tissue.

Bettany: Wow, it's an actual incision of some kind, is it?

There's something, there's a blunt or a sharp object has

Actually gone into his back?

Daniel: Absolutely. And you can see, if you look at the skeleton,

The shoulder blade here, you can see is completely

Shattered into fragments compared to the other side.

Bettany: Yes.

That is terrible to see, so what is it,

Because that's hit him with real force.

The scan results suggest gebelein man was the victim of

A violent attack...

Daniel: It's most probably a dagger that's gone straight in

A downwards angle through his shoulder blade.

It would have collapsed the lung,

Maybe cut one of the smaller arteries in the area and

Probably he died over one or two days.

Bettany: Right. So it's a really violent death.

I mean, are there any signs that he tried to defend himself?

That it was a fight of some kind?

Daniel: That's what's interesting,

There's, there's no defensive wounds.

He appears to have never seen it coming.

Bettany: Since gebelein man was stabbed in the back and

Didn't try to fight back, it looks like he was ambushed.

That is tragic.

Daniel: And what's also interesting is you can see

That his bones are in the process of fusing.

Bettany: Yes.

Daniel: So he was actually a young man when he died.

Bettany: Gebelein man would only have been about 20 years old

When his life ended...

Daniel: It was only when we ct scanned him that we realized

That we had the victim of a crime.

Bettany: So it's the technology of the future

Giving us back his past.

But as amazing as this 5,000 year old murder investigation

Is, the story doesn't stop there.

A truly remarkable individual, gebelein woman,

Was discovered at the same site.

So she's also over 5,000 years old.

And now modern technology is allowing us to piece together her story.

It is remarkable being this close to her.

You can see, that she's got a thick head of hair,

These beautiful little fingernails on the end of

Those very, very fine fingers of hers.

Daniel: Yeah.

What's incredible is she's still revealing secrets.

These dark smudges on her arm, which are very hard to see,

Are actually tattoos.

Bettany: Tattoos? All I can see is a smudge.

Daniel: Because they're hard to see,

We need to use an infrared camera really.

Bettany: So we're looking at the top of her shoulder?

Daniel: Yeah.

You can see that, so there's two lots of tattoos.

There's a series of...

Bettany: Oh my god. They've just come into focus.

That's amazing. That's amazing.

So it's four, four 's's.

This must be very early evidence of tattooing, isn't it?

Daniel: Well gebelein woman is the oldest known tattooed

Woman in the world.

So it's quite special.

She's very, very special.

Bettany: I mean it's so clear,

And presumably this is more what it would have looked like

When she was alive.

So you've got this curved stave and those 's's.

What are they for, what do you think?

Daniel: So these are actually symbols of high status, we think.

Bettany: It's quite rare to find strong women in history.

So that is pretty cool that she's the oldest tattooed

Woman and you think that shows her power and standing.

Gebelein man and woman might be amongst the oldest mummies

In the world, but now these scans reveal that murder,

Conflict and female empowerment aren't just modern

Phenomena, they were there in pre-history too.

These bodies were preserved naturally.

But they almost certainly gave ancient egyptians the idea to

Mummify deliberately, which has left us with the most

Incredible historical legacy.

But more than that, I think this wonderful woman

Encourages us to respect and cherish her today.

My next mummy reveals that the ancient egyptians didn't just

Mummify humans, but animals too.

At number 6 on our countdown we have the hawk mummy,

Who's been hiding a shocking secret for 2,000 years.

And it is only with a recent discovery that the

Extraordinary truth has been revealed.

And to unlock this mummy's story I'm heading somewhere

Super-special: Ancient egypt's city of the dead...

Saqqara!

For thousands of years this place was used as a burial ground.

And I've just heard that one of the underground catacombs

Is being opened up, so I'm heading there.

The entrance to this catacomb has been blocked up since 1970

To protect it from tomb raiders,

But I've been allowed to witness its opening...

It's just so special to see this because this is how every

Tomb and catacomb has been raided and robbed and entered

For thousands of years in the ancient world and the modern.

It's amazing.

I didn't think I'd ever get to see this.

It's amazing.

And inspector doctor ahmed zekry is here to open up this

Tomb, sealed for the last 50 years.

Many of saqqara's tunnels have never been explored;

In the past, people have got lost down here,

So I've got to stick close to hashim.

Wow. It's hot.

It gets really hot down here and it's pretty close.

It hasn't been open for years.

Oh, look at this. Look at this.

I'd no idea that we'd get access to the chambers with so many in.

So each one of these pots that you see,

That contains a mummified bird.

And apparently there could be millions of them,

Just here, just in this catacomb alone.

Is it ok, can we get down here, hashim?

What have you found?

Yeah.

Oh, that's incredible.

That's so incredible.

So the mummies have still got their wrappings on.

Yeah.

Every single mummy mattered.

Each one was left with the hope its owner would win

Favor with the gods...

What? Oh my god.

It's a perfect hawk's head.

Look at, you can see the beak and the eyes and this kind of

Decoration on the mummification bandages.

That's incredible.

That is a find I am not going to forget for the rest of my life.

Caused a sensation in europe.

To satisfy 'mummy mania', souvenir hunters imported,

And smuggled mummy remains to britain.

Eventually, our hawk mummy found its way to maidstone museum.

And when curator samantha harris decided to scan it

She had a shock in store...

Hi, hi, are you sam? Bettany.

Samantha: Yes. Hi, nice to meet you.

Bettany: That looks to me like a hawk,

Like a falcon of some kind.

Samantha: Absolutely.

So we have it documented as a mummified hawk and that is

Because you've got the very iconic falcon eyes here and

The shape of it is very much bird-like.

So with the wider shoulders and the narrower feet this is

Very much the kind of hawk shape you see in mummies.

Bettany: So lovely this gold decoration.

What clues does the surface give you?

Samantha: There's detail of what look like feet with gold

Painted toenails and on the base as well actually what

Looks like the bottom of sandals.

Bettany: So it does, so that's odd.

Samantha: It's a very weird combination to be seeing in

This kind of cartonnage as well.

Bettany: Can you see the mummy itself?

Samantha: Yes. You can still see the wrapped mummy here.

So in good condition.

Bettany: Beautiful.

I mean that's beautifully done.

Can we scan it?

Samantha: Oh absolutely.

Bettany: Chris price has kindly agreed to scan our hawk

Mummy with the very latest ct tech to show me what's inside

Chris: So, if I start to strip off the outer linen,

You start to see what's inside.

Bettany: But that looks like a... Hand.

I mean, it's got hands!

And feet.

I mean, that is not a bird.

And this became even clearer, as I started to look at the 3d images.

You've got to explain what's happening here,

Because that looks like that was a human inside there.

Samantha: Exactly.

We're expecting very much to see a bird coming through in the scans.

And straight away, it became very clear that it was not a hawk.

We can see there's crossed hands,

And arms across the body there.

That's very much a human mummification position.

Bettany: Absolutely.

Samantha: So the conclusion was come to that it was a human baby.

Bettany: A baby, look at that.

Is it a he or a she? Do you know?

Yeah. We've relatively recently found that it is most probably male.

Right.

It's so touching, isn't it?

So after 2,000 years plus,

He's been lying there,

Nobody knew his story.

It's hard to believe that this 'hawk mummy' actually

Concealed a tiny baby.

I've never seen anything like this in all my years as a historian.

So I've come to the university of cairo to find out more,

To see if my old friend radiologist sahar saleem can

Help unravel the mystery.

An amazing team including professor andrew nelson from

The university of western ontario has been working hard

To piece together this story.

Sahar: The striking thing is when you look at the skull.

You can see this is where the eyes are and this is the nose,

This is the profile.

But there is absent of the skull above the eyebrow.

So the medical term is anencephaly or there's no skull.

This is a very well-known deformity that must have

Happened very early during the development of the fetus.

Bettany: So is this a condition that you'd still see today?

Sahar: Yes. Absolutely. We still see it today.

From the way that the bones developed,

It was likely 27 weeks,

That'd be seven months of pregnancy when he died.

Bettany: So even though this child is miscarried,

They're treating him with respect and with love.

Sahar: And they want him to be among them in the life

After, so they want him as a part of the family.

There are very few mummified fetuses that we know.

There are about eight, so this guy is a special one.

Bettany: The ancient egyptians believed that the soul was

Created in the womb as the baby developed,

So this child could be reunited,

Body and soul, with his family in the afterlife.

This little mummy tells us so much about the ancient

Egyptian worldview where there was less of a distinction

Between gods and humans and animals.

But it also tells us about pain and loss.

This little baby didn't survive birth,

But he was given wings so he could fly to the afterlife.

Next time, I'll be counting down my final 5 as we reveal

My number 1 egyptian mummy.

Err, wish me luck.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.